Memorandum from Lt. Gen. L[emuel] Matthewson, Director, Joint Staff, to Admiral Gardner, General Everest, and General Eddleman, "Atomic Weapons Requirements Studies for 1959," 9 March 1956, Confidential

Source: Memorandum from Lt. Gen. L[emuel] Matthewson, Director, Joint Staff, to Admiral Gardner, General Everest, and General Eddleman, "Atomic Weapons Requirements Studies for 1959," 9 March 1956, Confidential Date: Mar 9, 1956 Collection: U.S. Cold War Nuclear Target Lists Declassified for First Time Dec 22, 2015

Editorial Analysis

Original analysis by the DriftSeas editorial desk. The complete primary-source document, transcribed from the National Security Archive scan, appears in full below.

Atomic Planning under Pressure, 1956‑59

The memorandum dated 9 March 1956 is a routine‑looking but telling piece of the Cold War bureaucracy that undergirded America’s nuclear posture in the late 1950s. Drafted by Lt. Gen. L. Matthew Matthewson, then Director of the Joint Staff, it was sent to the heads of the three services most directly responsible for delivering strategic nuclear firepower—Admiral Gardner (Chief of Naval Operations), General Everest (Chief of Staff, Army), and General Eddleman (Chief of Staff, Air Force). The note’s purpose was to enforce a tight schedule for submitting “Atomic Weapon Requirements Studies” that would feed into the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s production guidance to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for the fiscal years beginning 1 July 1958 and 1 July 1959.

The immediate circumstance was a cascade of deadline‑extension requests from the unified combatant commands. The Strategic Air Command (SAC) and Far East Command (FE) each asked to push the 1 May 1956 submission date back a month or two, arguing that the massive coordination required across theater commands made the original timetable unrealistic. Matthewson’s reply, however, reflects a higher‑level calculus: the two‑month window between the May submission and the July production guidance was “not compressible” because it dovetailed with the AEC‑DoD budget cycle and with congressional appropriations for the nuclear weapons complex. In other words, the schedule was not a matter of convenience but a fixed point in the inter‑agency contract that bound the Pentagon to the AEC’s production line.

The Bigger Picture: The 1958‑59 Nuclear Build‑Up

The memorandum sits squarely within the broader “New Look” defense strategy that President Eisenhower articulated in the mid‑1950s. Faced with spiralling conventional costs in Korea and the burgeoning Soviet nuclear arsenal, Eisenhower’s administration leaned on strategic atomic weapons as the linchpin of deterrence. The 1958 “Nuclear Weapons Stockpile” plan, later formalized in the 1959 “Nuclear Weapons Requirements Study,” called for a dramatic expansion of both strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as a diversification of warhead types to match a widening array of targets—from Soviet industrial centers to hardened missile silos.

The actors named in the memo—CINCSAC, CINCFE, and the “Rainbow Team” of the Joint Strategic Plans Group (JSPG)—were the very people tasked with translating political doctrine into concrete numbers of warheads, delivery systems, and target lists. Their internal recommendation to reject any postponement reveals a culture of “schedule‑driven” planning that prioritized predictability for the AEC over the operational flexibility that theater commanders might have desired. It also underscores the growing influence of the AEC, which by the late 1950s had become the gatekeeper of the nation’s nuclear production capacity.

Reading Between the Lines

While the memo’s language is formally courteous—“I recommend that you approve the attached draft message”—its subtext is a clear admonition to the services: the strategic timetable will not bend for individual theater concerns. The reference to “firm Atomic Energy Commission – Department of Defense agreements” hints at a contractual relationship that limited the Pentagon’s ability to reshuffle resources without jeopardizing the entire production pipeline. Moreover, the extensive distribution list, which includes senior officers from the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary to the CNO, and the “Rainbow Team,” signals that this was a message meant to be seen as a unified front, discouraging any one service from lobbying for special treatment.

The memo also illustrates the early stages of what would become the “nuclear triad” doctrine. By 1959, the United States was moving toward a balanced mix of bombers, ICBMs, and submarine‑launched ballistic missiles. The requirement studies that this memo seeks to lock in were the data that would justify the procurement of new B‑52s, the deployment of Titan and Atlas missiles, and the construction of the first Polaris‑armed submarines. In effect, the document is a bureaucratic keystone that helped cement the triad’s numerical foundation.

Legacy and Contemporary Relevance

Declassified in 1977, the memorandum offers scholars a rare glimpse into the procedural mechanics that shaped the nuclear arms race. It reminds us that the massive stockpiles of the Cold War were not solely the product of grand strategy debates but also of calendar‑driven administrative decisions. The insistence on meeting the May‑June deadline illustrates how tightly inter‑agency schedules could dictate the pace of weapons development, a dynamic that still resonates today in debates over modernizing the nuclear arsenal and coordinating with the Department of Energy’s national laboratories.

For contemporary policymakers, the memo serves as a cautionary tale: when strategic timelines are locked into budgetary cycles and inter‑agency contracts, flexibility can be sacrificed at the altar of predictability. Understanding this historical tension can inform current discussions about how to balance rapid technological innovation—such as hypersonic weapons or low‑yield nuclear options—with the institutional inertia of the nuclear complex.

The analysis above draws directly from the memorandum’s content and situates it within the well‑documented evolution of U.S. nuclear policy during the Eisenhower era.

DECLASSIFIED
Authority NAD 943011

ENCLOSURE

DRAFT MESSAGE

TO: Commander in Chief, Far East
    Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command

INFO: Commander in Chief, Alaska
      Commander in Chief, Atlantic
      Commander in Chief, Caribbean
      Commander in Chief, Continental Air Defense Command
      Commander in Chief, U.S. European Command
      Commander in Chief, U.S. Northeast Command
      Commander in Chief, Pacific
      Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Eastern
      Atlantic and Mediterranean

Reference SM-129-56 and CINCSAC R-072200Z (NOTAL)
and CINCFE 800705 (NOTAL) messages, postponement of suspense
date of 1 May 1956 is not approved. Commitments to the Secre-
tary of Defense and Atomic Energy Commission, based on estab-
lished budget cycles, require adherence to present schedule.